Welcome

Excellent Fooling i' Faith — Sir Andrew Aguecheek (first draft of Twelth Night)

The Rules 

         And here they are:

1.  E-mail your answer to each puzzle to:      

  answers@puzzlemaster.co.uk  

2.  Send any additional verses on the theme of the day to the:

  verse@puzzlemaster.co.uk

            

         3.  Entries must be accompanied by full name, and address.   

     [The address can be in abbreviated form, e.g.Bert Huggamuggah, Windsor,or

     Franek Pilchardski, Krakow]

4.   At the end of the warm-up session the best entries will be published here. 

5.  There are no prizes. Kudos and glory should suffice.

*Things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.




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Day 5 — Vitae Lampada

   
Lord Coco said, 'Let's light a torch
And lug it through our lands,
To lighten up the poor folks' lives
To warm their hearts-- and hands!'

Puzzle 5


a) On the English mainland part of the torch's  
    journey Lord Coco wants the torch to visit 
    each English county exactly once ending in   
   Greater London. Where must it start?

b) Could the map of English counties be  
   coloured with 3 colours in such a way that  
   no two counties sharing a segment of  
   border should have the same colour?

Day 4—The Drought

A dreadful drought had struck the land
Though rain it fell and fell-
'Twas wrong this sort of rain you see
It did not soak in well...*


"The waterboard the reservoirs
To fill do all they can!
They do not catch the rain that falls-
They start a hosepipe ban!"

Puzzle 4
You have been hired to regulate the level of the Serpentine so canoeing can take place there. You have 3 hoses: Hose A, Hose B and Hose C.Hose A will fill the lake in 18 hours. Hose B in 15 hours. Hoses B & C together would take 6 hours. You manage to connect all three hoses. How long should it take?

 

Day 3

O men rise up, let sport break loose!
Let fat folk leave their sofas!
Don shirts and shorts and running spikes
And wellingtons and loafers...

Then up spake David Cameroon
"But England's in austerity!
Twon't be like Athens or Beijing
Low-cost goes with the territory"




Puzzle 3

How many ways are there of spelling
AUSTERITY starting at the top letter
and with each move proceeding
to the letter slightly to the left or the right
in the row just beneath it?








What if you have to go through the central E?

Day 2

In his magic mirror Joris spied
The feckless, lazy and hard-pressed;
Could he revive in such as these
Those qualities that make the English best?

What virtues define our island nation
This land of shirkers and of boozers
Who gave the world so many sports-
And at every one of them are losers?




Puzzle 2


Find in this array of letters 10 qualities that once made England great.

Day 1 - Joris Bonson

Joris Bonson threw a Games-
The kind we had of old-
For Glory's sake and just for Fun

For Laurels- not for gold!

And Lo! Joris moved among his people in the guise at some times of a jester and at others that of a Roman senator; for he had not only a sense of fun but a classic intellect: he knew Latin, and a little Greek,* yet he was not the fool he appeared to be. For well he knew that folk prefer to speak freely to a holy fool than to a pompous ass;  pc,** you see, had driven truth from the heights of power to seek refuge in the nooks and crannies. Like Henry he sails forth among the folk to take the measure of his people. 

That sort of mind would make short work of our first puzzle:

Puzzle 1:


The numbers in this grid have been replaced with As, Bs and a C. Their value is shown for just one row and one column. What are A, B and C?